My graduate training was not in particularly prestigious programs. I applied for about a dozen Masters programs, got into a handful, and chose to attend the University of Alabama. When I was looking for a PhD program, I talked to few potential advisors, but was only encouraged to apply to a single program. So I only applied for and was accepted (luckily!) into the quantitative biology program at the University of Texas Arlington, so I went to UTA. So both my Master’s and PhD institutions were solid, but not famous or prestigious. After my PhD, I was a postdoc at the University of Virginia, which is a fancier and more prestigious institution (they are called a public ivey by some, probably mostly UVA alums) that is highly ranked. The department also has several important figures in ecology and evolutionary biology that are leaders of major scientific organizations and so on. My experience with all three institutions has given me some insight into how prestige of the institution influences career trajectories.
I was curious, so I compiled a list of all of the graduate students that I could remember from around when I was at each institution. There has been plenty of time (at least a decade) for these cohorts to settle into permanent positions. I am not going to show the data for confidentiality reasons, so you will just have to trust me. Also, this is at best some back of the envelope calculations (this is a blog, not a journal), so you should consider this to be illustrative, not definitive.
So what are the career trajectories of PhD students at each type of institution? Well, they are almost identical. About a quarter of the students at each institution ended up in tenure-track jobs, and at roughly the same types of institutions ranging from PUIs to R1s. Most of the others ended up in highly sought after careers like working for federal or state agencies or for biotech companies. Only a few seemed to have jobs that did not require a PhD, or jobs that were not permanent. At least at the three institutions that I trained at, the outcomes are basically the same, despite spanning the prestige spectrum.
I am not trying to claim that there are no benefits to attending more prestigious programs. Monetary support for research is likely to be greater, and you may get to rub elbows with bigshots that can open doors for you later in your career. There are a few institutions (e.g., Harvard, Yale, Princeton) that come with a special cachet that would definitely benefit you. But you can also get a great job if you get a PhD at a large, not particularly well-known public university. And you can definitely have a miserable experience at an Ivey, or an amazing experience (like mine!) at a big public school. Even if on average grad students at prestigious programs have “better” outcomes (whatever that means), the benefit is likely to be small, variable, and not particularly predictive of individual success. To me, this suggests that a lot of what drives variation in career outcomes among grad student cohorts is what individual students want out of a career and life.
I was curious, so I compiled a list of all of the graduate students that I could remember from around when I was at each institution. There has been plenty of time (at least a decade) for these cohorts to settle into permanent positions. I am not going to show the data for confidentiality reasons, so you will just have to trust me. Also, this is at best some back of the envelope calculations (this is a blog, not a journal), so you should consider this to be illustrative, not definitive.
So what are the career trajectories of PhD students at each type of institution? Well, they are almost identical. About a quarter of the students at each institution ended up in tenure-track jobs, and at roughly the same types of institutions ranging from PUIs to R1s. Most of the others ended up in highly sought after careers like working for federal or state agencies or for biotech companies. Only a few seemed to have jobs that did not require a PhD, or jobs that were not permanent. At least at the three institutions that I trained at, the outcomes are basically the same, despite spanning the prestige spectrum.
I am not trying to claim that there are no benefits to attending more prestigious programs. Monetary support for research is likely to be greater, and you may get to rub elbows with bigshots that can open doors for you later in your career. There are a few institutions (e.g., Harvard, Yale, Princeton) that come with a special cachet that would definitely benefit you. But you can also get a great job if you get a PhD at a large, not particularly well-known public university. And you can definitely have a miserable experience at an Ivey, or an amazing experience (like mine!) at a big public school. Even if on average grad students at prestigious programs have “better” outcomes (whatever that means), the benefit is likely to be small, variable, and not particularly predictive of individual success. To me, this suggests that a lot of what drives variation in career outcomes among grad student cohorts is what individual students want out of a career and life.
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